About

Jillian is an archaeologist, writer, and teacher. She builds and critically evaluates stories about the
past using evidence gleaned from the hundreds of thousands of objects that were once used,
broken, and discarded by enslaved people in the early modern Atlantic World. She applies
behavioral ecological frameworks to material culture and historic documents to help understand
how women and men navigated slavery and freedom throughout the Caribbean and Southeast in
the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. In addition to specializing in the material culture of
enslavement, Jillian is skilled in creating archaeological and historical databases, analyzing data
from them using SQL and R, developing websites, and promoting ethical data and code sharing.

Jillian earned her PhD from the University of Virginia in 2006. But her commitment to
archaeology began nearly two decades earlier when she worked as an excavator for the Maine
Historic Preservation Commission at The Hunter Farm Site, a late archaic Native American
habitation (4000-5000 BPE) overlooking the Androscoggin River. This deeply stratified alluvial
site taught her to love meticulous fieldwork.

She made the move to contact- and historic-period archaeology during her undergraduate work at
UVA, where she attended the Monticello-UVA Archaeological Field School at Monticello with
Bill Kelso and Barbara Heath. This field school led to internships at Monticello, Poplar Forest,
and The Hermitage. In a gap year between undergrad and graduate school, Jillian worked in
central Sicily doing archaeological survey related to Sicel-Greek interactions. She returned to
Piedmont Virginia for graduate school and worked summers as the Lab Director at the Catherine
Foster site, a free Black antebellum site on UVA’s campus.

After coursework, Jillian spent several years as a Research Archaeologist at The Hermitage,
Andrew Jackson’s plantation outside Nashville, Tennessee. There her fieldwork and research
focused on the Triplex and an area known as The First Hermitage.

Jillian was hired by Fraser Neiman and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 2000 to design,
build, and direct the “Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery.” The project was a
pioneering experiment, funded by the Mellon Foundation, in how archaeologists might use internet technologies to facilitate collection and sharing of high-quality data on artifacts and their excavation contexts and to promote collaboration among researchers, as well as comparative data
analysis and synthesis.

Building on the experiment’s success, DAACS expanded its geographical coverage and became the “Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery,” providing data on millions of artifacts and their excavation contexts from archaeological sites of enslavement across the Atlantic World. You can read more about Jillian’s twenty-five-year leadership role with DAACS here.

Today Jillian collaborates with archaeologists and architectural historians in the Caribbean and North America. In addition to her own scholarship, she mentors other scholars, teaches material culture, and provides guidance in developing archaeological databases and data analysis to address important research questions.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

2006 Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Virginia. Dissertation: Strategic consumption: archaeological evidence for costly signaling among enslaved men and women in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake.

1998 M.A. Anthropology, University of Virginia.

1994 B.A. Archaeology, with Highest Distinction, University of Virginia.

1992 Monticello-University of Virginia Archaeological Field School, Charlottesville.

1990-1993 Bates College, History and Anthropology Double Major. Transferred to UVA in Fall 1992 to study Archaeology with Stephen Plog and James Deetz.

Positions

2025 Visiting Scholar, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.

2015-2025 Project Director, Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Charlottesville, Virginia. The DAACS Project Director position was created by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 2015.

2000-2014 Project Manager, Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Charlottesville, Virginia. Galle was hired at the inception of DAACS to develop, build and expand the archive.

1999-2000 Acting Director of Archaeology, The Hermitage, Hermitage, Tennessee.

1998-1999 Research Archaeologist, The Hermitage, Hermitage, Tennessee.

1996-1997 Field Archaeologist, The Hermitage, Home of Andrew Jackson, Hermitage, TN. May-August.

1995 Assistant Director, Archaeology at Venable Lane: The Foster Homesite. University of Virginia Archaeological Field School, Charlottesville, VA. May-August.

1994 Lab Director, Archaeology at Venable Lane: The Foster Homesite. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. May-August.

1994 Archaeological Survey, Aidone, Sicily. Archaeological surveyor on a University of Virginia project focused on the Greek site of Morgantina. September-November.

1994 Lab Assistant, Monticello Archaeology Department, Charlottesville, VA. Spring semester.

1993 Intern in Historical Archaeology at The Hermitage, Home of Andrew Jackson, Hermitage, TN. May-July.

1993 Research Intern, Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, Lynchburg, VA. Spring semester.

1992 Lab Intern, Monticello Archaeology Department, Charlottesville, VA. Fall semester.

1989-1993 Contract Archaeologist for the Maine Historic Preservation Commission Augusta, ME. Summer employment, June-August.

Grants

2024 (Senior Personnel) National Science Foundation Grant for Cracking the Colonoware Code: Characterizing Ceramic Recipes and Production Communities in Early America ($354,000). Elizabeth Bollwerk and Lindsay Bloch, Principal Investigators.

2018 (Principal Investigator with Co-Principal Investigator Elizabeth Bollwerk) National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities grant for The Origins of Slavery: Digitizing Flowerdew Hundred ($315,000).

2017 (Principal Investigator) National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement grant for Expanding the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery Research Consortium ($325,000 outright with $50,000 Sustainability Match Grant).

2014 (Principal Investigator) National Endowment for the Humanities’ Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant for Beyond the Mansion 2.0: Completing a Digital Archive for Thirty Years of Archaeological Research at The Hermitage ($300,000). Grant application is linked on NEH website as model sample narrative (Beyond the Mansion 2.0: Completing a Digital Archive for Thirty Years of Archaeological Research at The Hermitage)

2013 (Co-Principal Investigator with Fraser Neiman) Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholarly Communications grant for The DAACS Research Consortium ($450,000).

2013 National Science Foundation (Principal Investigator): “Manufacturing Dynamics of Afro-Caribbean Ceramics on Jamaica in the 18th and 19th Centuries” (MURR INAA Subsidy NSF grant #1110793).

2011 (Co-Principal Investigator with Charles Cobb, Director of The South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology) Save America’s Treasures Grant for Preservation and Access: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Yaughan and Curriboo Plantations, South Carolina ($189,244).

2008 (Co-Principal Investigator with Roger Leech) The St. Kitts-Nevis Digital Archaeology Initiative. JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Grant, ($132,832).

2008 (with Fraser Neiman) The DAACS Caribbean Initiative, New River Survey. Grant to support internships in historical archaeology for UWI, Mona students participation in The St. Kitts-Nevis Digital Archaeology Initiative’s survey of the New River I Slave village, Nevis. The Reed Foundation ($20,000).

2007 (with Fraser Neiman) The DAACS Caribbean Initiative, Stewart Castle Survey. Grant to support the enrollment of UWI, Mona students in the University of Virginia’s Falmouth, Jamaica field school in historical archaeology. The Reed Foundation ($22,000).

2004 (with Fraser Neiman) Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholarly Communications grant for The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery ($576,000).

Fellowships and Awards

2026 Winterthur Museum NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship.

2015-2016 Visiting Scholar, University of South Carolina and South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.

2008 Gilder Lehrman Fellow. The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, Colonial Williamsburg. January-April.

2007 (with Fraser Neiman) Society for Historical Archaeology Award of Merit for The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery.

2005 University of Virginia’s Department of Anthropology Harrison Fellowship for Dissertation Write-up.

2000 Recipient of The Society for Historical Archaeology’s Student Paper Prize Awarded for paper entitled: “Building Tensions: Architecture and Slavery at The Hermitage.”

1995-1998 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Three-year graduate fellowship for the study of anthropology/archaeology.

Select Invited Lectures

2025 “Landscapes of Enslavement in North America and the Caribbean.” The Wagner Free Institute of Science, Philadelphia, April 3, 2025.

2021 “Landscapes of Enslavement in the Caribbean.” Seminar for Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto’s Slavery, the Slave Trade, and the Built Environment, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. October 1, 2021.

2019 “Fishing and Foraging at the Stewart Castle Estate: Enslaved Children’s Contributions to the Market Activities of Enslaved Households in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica.” Paper presented at a Conference in Honor of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of Eric William’s Capitalism and Slavery, Liverpool, UK. Organized by the International Center of Jefferson Studies, Museums Liverpool, and the University of Liverpool. November 3, 2019.

2019 Francis-Brown, Suzanne and Jillian Galle. “The Material Impacts of Agricultural Diversification and Amelioration on Enslaved Laborers in Colonial Jamaica: An Archaeological Perspective.” Paper presented at a Conference in Honor of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of Eric William’s Capitalism and Slavery, Liverpool, UK. Organized by the International Center of Jefferson Studies, Museums Liverpool, and the University of Liverpool. November 3, 2019.

2019 “Sugar and the Landscape of Enslavement in the British Caribbean: An Archaeological Perspective.” Invited Lecture, Dunbarton Oaks. October 25, 2019.

2019 “Best Examples, Challenges, Successes, and Lessons Learned from Digital Collections Projects: Archaeology.” Montpelier Digital Collections Workshop, James Madison’s Montpelier, July 30, 2019.

2019 “The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery: A Case Study in Open Data and Collaboration in the Field of Archaeology.” Invited Lecture at the Unfree Memories Symposium, Rutgers University, February 22, 2019.

2019 “Building a Sustainable Digital Archive: A Case Study from the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery. “Keynote Speaker and Facilitator for Winterthur Museum’s Digital Furniture Workshop, January 10-11, 2019. http://www.winterthur.org/education/academic-programs/digital-furniture-workshop-2019/

2018 “Fishing and foraging at the Stewart Castle Estate: An archaeological exploration of the impact of foraging strategies on 18th-century enslaved households in Jamaica.” Invited Lecture Florida Museum of Natural History, March 2018. Gainesville, FL.

2016 Visiting Lecture to the University of Mississippi’s Slavery Working Group, November 2016, Oxford, MI.

2016 University of South Carolina Provost Visiting Scholar at University of South Carolina, Columbia. Lectures, workshops and roundtable discussions included:

“Fishing and foraging at the Stewart Castle Estate: An archaeological exploration of the complex economic life of enslaved households in 18th-century Jamaica.” A public colloquium sponsored by USC’s Department of History and the South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology as part of USC Provost Visiting Scholar’s Program. April 14, 2016.
Roundtable Luncheon. Contributing data to DAACS: a discussion for archaeology faculty and students. April 13, 2016.
Roundtable Luncheon: Contributing data to DAACS: a discussion for public and private sector contractors, researchers, and land managers. April 13, 2016.

2015 University of South Carolina Provost Visiting Scholar at University of South Carolina, Columbia. Lectures, workshops and roundtable discussions included:

“Enslaved Consumers? Consumption and Display among enslaved women and men in Virginia and Jamaica: an archaeological perspective.” Invited Lecture to Dr. Terrence Weik’s USC Historical Archaeology Seminar. September 28, 2015.
“The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery: A Case Study in open Data and Collaboration in the Field of Archaeology.” A USC Provost Visiting Scholar Lecture, University of South Carolina. September 29, 2015.
“Teaching with DAACS”, a two-hour workshop. A USC Provost Visiting Scholar Workshop, University of South Carolina. October 1, 2015.
“Doing Research with DAACS”, a day-long workshop. A USC Provost Visiting Scholar Workshop, University of South Carolina. October 3, 2015.

2013 One of four invited panelists discussing “Studying Slavery in the Information Age at Telling the History of Slavery” at the conference Scholarship, Museum Interpretation, and the Public. Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Foundation. February 22-23.

2012 “Beyond the Mansion: Digitizing Thirty Years of Archaeological research on Slavery at The Hermitage.” Invited lecture for The Hermitage, Nashville, TN. April 12.

2011 Invited lecture for HSPV 624: Methodological Approaches for Historic Preservation through the Use of Digital Media. University of Pennsylvania. October 20.

2011 “Consumption and gendered social strategies among slaves in the 18th-century Chesapeake and Jamaica: an archaeological perspective.” Invited lecture for the University of South Carolina and the South Carolina Institute for Anthropology and Archaeology. April 18.

2010 Invited speaker at Hampton National Historic Site’s Fourth Annual Symposium titled Sifting through Slavery: Archaeology and Interpretation of Agricultural and Industrial Slavery in the Mid-Atlantic. March 25, 2010.

2010 “Archaeological Investigations at the Papine and Mona Slavery Villages: Preliminary Results.” Invited Lecture for the Archaeological Society of Jamaica January.

2009 Invited Lectures for The University of Tennessee’s Department of Anthropology Guest Lecture Series.

“Costly signaling and gendered social strategies among slaves in the 18th-century Chesapeake: an archaeological perspective.” November 10.
“Jamaica Counterpoint: economic diversification, demographics and enslaved laborer participation in Jamaica’s internal economy.” November 11.

2009 Invited lecture for HSPV 624: Methodological Approaches for Historic Preservation through the Use of Digital Media. University of Pennsylvania, October.

2008 “Understanding Slavery in the Atlantic World through the use of digital technology: an archaeological perspective.” Invited lecture at The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. Part of The Institute’s “Technological Innovations in Archaeological Analysis” series. March 7.

Digital Workshops and Programming

2020-2024 Founder, organizer and moderator, DAACS Conversations with Collaborating Scholars A bi-weekly series of online seminars, showcasing research by members of the DAACS Research Consortium. Free and open to the public. All DAACS Conversations are recorded and available online. https://www.daacs.org/research/daacs-conversations/

2021 Organizer and instructor, with Elizabeth Bollwerk, Digital Data Collection in Archaeology. A virtual short course from DAACS. July 6, 13, 20, 27. https://www.daacs.org/research/daacs-open-academy/ The workshops were recorded and are available online here: DAACS Open Academy Archives | DAACS

2021 Organizer, and instructor with Elizabeth Bollwerk, Pete Alonzi, and Fraser Neiman, Introduction to R Programming for Historical Archaeologists. A virtual short course from DAACS. September 24, October 8, 27, November 5, 19, December 3, 17. https://www.daacs.org/research/daacs-open-academy/. All workshops were recorded and are available online here: DAACS Open Academy Archives | DAACS

Teaching Experience

2025 Director, DAACS Summer Institute at Monticello. Four week summer institute in early modern material culture and database methods for 10 fellows and interns, June 8-July 3. Funded by the International Center for Jefferson Studies and DAACS.

2022 Director, DAACS Summer Institute at Monticello. Four week summer institute in early modern material culture and database methods for 21 fellows and interns, July 18-August 13. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and DAACS.

2019 Director, DAACS Summer Institute at Monticello. Two week summer institute in early modern material culture and database methods for 5 interns from the Society of Black Archaeologists. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and DAACS.

2018 Lead Instructor, Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Conference Workshop, Doing Research and Teaching with The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) New Orleans, LA, January 3.

2016 Lead Instructor, Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Conference Workshop, Doing Research and Teaching with The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) Washington D.C., January 6.

2015 Teaching with DAACS Workshop at The University of South Carolina, October 1.

2015 Doing Research with DAACS, A day long workshop on teaching with The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, The University of South Carolina, October 3.

2014 Director, Inaugural DAACS Summer Institute at Monticello as part of the Mellon-funded Expanding the DAACS Research Consortium grant. Two week summer institute in early modern material culture and database methods for 18 archaeologists from around North American and the Caribbean.

2011 Director and Instructor, The University of the West Indies, Mona Archaeological Field School, in collaboration with the DAACS Caribbean Initiative. Archaeological survey at the Mona Great House, Mona Estate, Jamaica. May-June. In collaboration with Dr. Ivor Conolley, UWI Lecturer in Archaeology.

2010 Director and Instructor, The University of the West Indies, Mona Archaeological Field School, in collaboration with the DAACS Caribbean Initiative. Archaeological excavations at the Mona and Papine Villages, Mona and Papine Estates, Kingston, Jamaica. January. In collaboration with Dr. Sabrina Rampersad, UWI Lecturer in Archaeology.

2009 Director and Instructor, The University of the West Indies, Mona Archaeological Field School, in collaboration with the DAACS Caribbean Initiative. Archaeological excavations at the Papine Village, Papine Estate, Kingston, Jamaica. January. In collaboration with Dr. Sabrina Rampersad, UWI Lecturer in Archaeology.

2008 Director and Instructor, The University of the West Indies, Mona Archaeological Field School, in collaboration with the DAACS Caribbean Initiative. Archaeological excavations at the Mona and Papine Villages, Mona and Papine Estates, Jamaica. January. In collaboration with Dr. Sabrina Rampersad, UWI Lecturer in Archaeology.

2007 Director, Anthropology 382: The Falmouth Field School in Historical Archaeology. May 23-June 15, 2007, Falmouth, Jamaica. The University of Virginia and in conjunction with Architectural History: 555, The Falmouth Field School in Historic Preservation, directed by Dr. Louis Nelson.

2006 Lecturer. History 28A: Research Methods and Techniques in Archaeology. The Department of History and Archaeology, The University of West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. Spring semester.

2003 Instructor. Anthropology 284: Unearthing the Household: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Contemporary Archaeology. University of Virginia, Summer Session I, June 10-July 8, 2003.

1995 Assistant Director, Archaeology at Venable Lane: The Foster Homesite. University of Virginia Archaeological Field School, Charlottesville, VA. May-August.

1994 Lab Director, Archaeology at Venable Lane: The Foster Homesite. University of Virginia Archaeological Field School, Charlottesville, VA. May-August.

Professional and Community Service

2025-2027 Second Vice President, Vernacular Architecture Forum.

2023-2026 Senior Advisor on The Alexandria Institute’s IMLS Grant, Advancing FAIR+CARE in Cultural Heritage – The Alexandria Archive Institute.

2019-2021 Omohundro Annual Conference Program Committee Member, 2021 Conference.

2019 Vernacular Architecture Forum Annual Conference Co-Organizer with Aaron Wunsch, Jeffrey Cohen, Michael Emmons, Catherine Morrissey, and Jenn Robinson, Philadelphia.

Ongoing: Grant reviewer for National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.

Ongoing: Article Reviewer for American Antiquity, Historical Archaeology.

2002-2008 Steering Committee Member, Chaco Digital Initiative (www.chacoarchive.org).

2001- 2006 Member, Albemarle County Preservation Committee. Chair of Preservation Database Subcommittee 2000-2003.